How to Design a Business Card in less Than 15 Minutes

Business cards are now lucrative business throughout the world because virtually every business or company produces business cards every year. The following steps will help the designers to create good business cards, even also inexperienced designers.

 Idea Conceivableness and Brainstorming

In any creative work that will be very beautiful, there must be a beautiful conceivability and brainstorming, so also a business card. The first thing is to get your logo ready. When a catching logo is ready, you will quickly think of the next step.

Choice of shape

After you have conceived and brainstormed the idea of designing a business card, the next step is to choose a shape. There are different shapes such as rectangular business cards, square business cards, circular business cards, etc.

When printing techniques get advanced and affordable, professionals will have more alternative shapes to explore. The die-cutting as a printing technique permits you to cut out shapes as you want.

After you conserved the spectrum, the thing is to just round the corners for a friendlier business card. To stand out, you can use a shape, outlines of products, and animal Mascots.

If you like, your whole business card theme can be built around clever cutting. Based on the image you intend to capture, you will use creative fun shapes.

Choice of size

After considering the shape you want the card will have, the next step is to choose the size. There are many sizes the card must have. The decision is yours. The decision of choice of size may be affected by each country.

The choice of size depends on the standard of the country.  To stand out as an artist or creator, you must understand that there are competitors and you must work towards beating them. Take the examples below as examples:

1. North American Standard: 3.5 × 2 in. (88.9 × 50.8 mm)
2. European Standard: 3.346 × 2.165 in. (85 × 55 mm)
3. Oceania Standard:  3.54 × 2.165 in. (90 × 55 mm)
4. African Standard: 543 × 1.968in. (90 × 50mm)

If the size is determined, there are other things to know and take into consideration when we are designing.

1. Bleed area: This is the outermost part of the card likely to be removed.
2. Trim line: It is the target line for cutting cards.
3. Safety line: It is anything outside this line that is subject to cutting mistakes. So, don’t let essential elements such as texts or logos fall outside this line.

Integration of logo and other graphics

After the size, what is next is to add a logo and the necessary graphics that will make the card attractive and professional. The visual elements of your business card design such as the logo should take center stage on your business card.

However, there are two sides at your disposal of which one side will be dedicated to the logo while the other side showcases the contact information of the person. It is also possible to have a logo on both sides.

The graphic artist may professionally add graphics work well for showing off his/her brand identity, including bright colors, cute cartoons, etc.

Also, you can incorporate interest and curiosity, brands, wordless visuals, URLs on one side, and brand and employee names.

Incorporation of relevant texts

There is no business card without the text no matter how small it is. The texts are the information passed to the reader for direction. It serves as a strategic choice such as drawing attention to your impressive social media audience.

The next step, therefore, is for you to decide what to put on your business card. Below is a list of some common texts.

1. Name: Every card must have a name.
2. Company/business name: Your business card should have a company/business name.
3. Job title: The job title on your business card helps remind the holder of who you are, what you do, and even how you can meet them.
4. Phone number: Every business card must have an active phone number because it is a method of communication.
5. Email: This time, every business card has to include an email business card because it allows sending documents as attachments.
6. Website URL: A good business card will include your site URL which serves as a non-aggressive invitation for visits.
7. Social media platforms: If you know that social media is relevant to your field, or you just want to show a bit of your personality, you can include social media links.
8. Address: As discussed, a business card must include your business address for drawing customers into your office or store location.

Choice of typography

Everyone has a choice. In this case, a designer will choose typography such as sizes, fonts, and colors. This will help how it looks. There are the importance of the following categories

1. Size: Good sizes will be chosen to maintain readability; you want all your text to be at least 6 pts.
2. Font. A good selection of fonts attracts your business card. The fonts distinguish the text as you intend the card to be.
3. Color. A good selection of colors radiates the work and makes it professional. Different colors can be chosen to perfect the work. Choose text brand colors that go well with the background color of your card. Remember that similar colors may look nice together but can be hard to read. It is important to experiment with contrasts for legibility.

Finishes of the work

As you are getting to the final stretch of the work, start considering printers, especially in terms of what they can offer. It is the printers that will offer special finishes that can go a long way in making a lasting impression. The following four categories are considered.

1. It is embossing. This technique creates three-dimensional reliefs and makes certain areas “pop out.” You can use it to draw attention to specific aspects of your card.
2. It is a letterpress. Letterpress printing pushes the paper down while inking it.
3. It is foil stamping. For shiny and reflective things such as tin foil, you can apply foil stamping to images or even just parts of images.
4. It is spot UV coating. Several business cards have a sleek varnish to create a sheen and smooth texture. This applies to a Spot UV coating, except only applying to certain areas. You can apply a gloss on only your logo, specific graphics, or even a word or phrase.

Final the design

If you are finalizing a business card, you will reevaluate your design and elements in place and accurate prediction of your final color choices and special finishes to make sure everything works.

1. Try to examine the visual flow: how does your eye move when looking at the card? What do you notice first? A good visual flow should start with the logo, followed by the name, and followed by the secondary information. Optimize the visual flows by changing an element’s size and location.
2. Try to clear out as much clutter as you can: The remaining elements determine the more impact each makes.
3. Try to double-check: This action makes sure you didn’t fall into any common pitfalls. You will confirm whether the text is legible or the colors clash or any element is too close to the edge.

It is important to have your designer send you the finished product as a vector file and a vector-based PDF since you want to use vector images to change the size.